LITMIR.BIZ

      HE SAT ACROSS FROM A CHURCH, alone and shaking. He couldn’t work up the courage to move closer. Maybe he could kneel on the steps outside. God would understand. He’d been through the same thing Himself, hadn’t He?

      An eye for an eye, that was the deal.

      The rage flared in an instant, so intense it made him tremble. It bubbled in his veins. He would shoot her in the eye if he could. Half blind her before she died. God would guide him as always.

      “Thou shalt not kill…” a small voice whispered in his head.

      “No!” He put his palms to his ears and pressed them tight. “An eye for an eye,” he repeated. And said it and said it until all he could see were Vanessa Connor’s gold-colored eyes.

      Chapter Three

      Wheeling and dealing. That’s what it came down to in the end. She could be part of the investigation—officially Federal Agent Rick Maguire’s investigation—so long as she gave him her full cooperation.

      Vanessa had been a cop long enough to know how the city wheels turned, how deals were struck. How Terence Palmer’s mind worked.

      So she propped her eyes open, drank four cups of coffee, shoved all thoughts of hot kisses and Rick Maguire’s sexy mouth from her head and went through both her closet and her armoire again. Twice. The surprise came near the end of her second search.

      “One little black dress missing,” she informed Rick the next day. They’d hooked up in Captain Palmer’s office. The unfortunate captain was at a meeting with the mayor. “It’s an older dress, that’s why I didn’t miss it at first.”

      Rick made a note on his handheld PC. “Can you describe it?”

      “Black jersey, clingy, with a deep V-neck. It’s a mini.” At his slanted look, a smile blossomed. “They’re fair to wear until you’re thirty-five. I’m twenty-nine.”

      He glanced at her legs, clad in stonewashed denim today, but said nothing.

      He continued to enter far more information than she’d offered. Patient by nature, she perched a hip on the captain’s desk. She wore a sleeveless white T with a black vest to cover her shoulder holster. Swinging a booted foot, she waited, stopped herself from fantasizing twice and finally nudged his leg. “I don’t know what you’re putting in there, but I haven’t said half that much since I got here.”

      “I’m running a comparison.”

      “Which suggests that my friends had stuff stolen from their closets, too. Same sort of thing?”

      He finished his input and closed the file. “I only have one comp so far. Deirdre Morton itemized her clothes and supplemented the list with photos.”

      “You’re joking.”

      “She even had a catalog system for socks and underwear.”

      “Lingerie.” When his brows came together, she grinned. “Women wear lingerie, Rick. Men and children have underwear. What was missing?”

      “A red spandex dress—also a mini—with about fifty zippers on it.”

      “Sounds appropriately slutty.” But she had to wonder why the killer had taken that particular item. “What was Deirdre wearing when they found her?”

      Rick hit more keys and handed her the PC.

      He hadn’t spared her. The photo of Deirdre in death had been taken at the scene. There was blood pooled on the ground and pieces of trash scattered around her head. She lay facedown, her white-blond hair askew and a long purple dress twisted around her body.

      Blanking her reaction, Vanessa returned the computer. “She liked long flowy things in college. I think she pictured herself as a sophisticated Parisian model.”

      “From sophisticated model to zippered spandex.”

      “We all have our moods, but thankfully most of us change with the times. I’m told people walked around San Francisco wearing bathrobes and sandals in the late sixties.”

      When he set his eyes on hers, Vanessa felt a faint blush warm her cheeks. God help her, she’d need to do something about that if they were going to work together.

      “Have you changed since college, Vanessa?”

      She worked on the blush. “More than you can imagine, and that’s all I’m saying right now. It’s after noon. Bobby Valley’s associate said he only shows up at the spa for a few hours a day.”

      “A spa on Haight Street.” Rick’s eyes glinted with humor. “Should be an interesting meeting.”

      Vanessa preceded him through the noisy bullpen and down the stairs to the street. Willpower kept her eyes off his mouth and her mind on their goal. They had to start somewhere, and one of the people she and the victims all had in common was a man named Robert Valley. He’d been a self-defense instructor when they’d gone to Berkeley. Now, he claimed to own and operate a day spa in Haight-Ashbury.

      Settled in Rick’s car, Vanessa flipped through her notes. “Mary’s Massage Parlor is now the Robert Valley Spa and Wellness Center. I can’t see displaying a sign like that on Haight Street.”

      Rick glanced over. “What was he like?”

      “Buff,” she decided after a moment. “But only at first glance. He was flabby around the middle. I remember thinking that was odd for a self-defense master. And he smelled like fried chicken. It put me off.” At his skeptical look, she moved a shoulder. “I like the smell of clean, okay? It’s a quirk.”

      Rick smelled better than clean, she thought. His hair, his skin, his clothes…Resolute, she set her mind back on Bobby Valley.

      “What else do I remember about him? He’d be in his early forties now, I guess.”

      “Forty-seven.”

      “So he was thirty-seven when we went to college? Bit of a pervert, then.”

      “Did he hit on you?”

      “He hit on all of us every chance he got, but me least of all. I think he knew he grossed me out. Plus I had a boyfriend.”

      “David Matthew Dunlop.”

      Indignation swelled. “Do I have any private life left?”

      “Where Berkeley’s concerned, no. You did three years of college, had one boyfriend for two of those years. Graduation day arrived, you left for Rotterdam where your mother lived, Dunlop moved to San Jose. You never got back together. More the fool David D.”

      Vanessa had her teeth bared until his last remark. It mollified her enough that she conceded, “He didn’t like my choice of careers. I was supposed to take a cue from my mother and go into law. She died that summer while we were cruising down the Rhine. When I got home, I enrolled at the police academy. David stayed in San Jose, college became a fond memory—and we’re way off topic, here. David didn’t murder anyone. Bobby Valley’s another story.”

      “Did any of your friends go out with Valley?”

      “Deirdre and Sylvia Porter did. More than once. Captain Palmer’s searching for Sylvia.”

      “So

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